I consider it both an ultra cool and crazy bold decision to cater an entire film festival towards one specific type of film. Doing this can, and often will, alienate a lot of people. Honestly, how many people anxiously await the Bicycle Film Festival, or the Queer Women of Color Film Festival who aren’t either avid cyclists or black gay females?

As a film enthusiast, I don’t go to festivals based solely on whether or not my race, and/or lifestyle match the festival’s program. I seek out festivals hoping to find that diamond in the ruff movie that will most likely never get a wide release. That movie that should have been nominated for an Oscar but you know never will. Last year’s Green Film Festival had a few of those movies and had I been the type of person to judge a book by its cover I never would have seen them.

My point is, you shouldn’t attend a film festival based on name alone. Take the Green Film Festival for example. My initial instinct upon hearing about this festival dedicated to exploring green issues and sustainable living was that it was secretly, or overtly, in cahoots with Green Peace and that all of their films would be propagandist shit. How wrong I was. Two Werner Herzog narrated features (one of which featured him voicing a plastic bag), a Brazilian doc, Hauling, which ended up being in my top 10 docs of the year, and a life-changing doc in Bag-It that will forever change the way I view my environment were some of last year’s highlights. As a film fan I am pretty stoked for this year’s lineup.

The 2nd Annual Green Film Festival goes for a week, from March 1st to the 7th and takes place at the SF Film Society Cinema in Japantown.

This year’s highlights, a complete film schedule, and the festival trailer can all be found after the jump Read More…

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It’s hard to believe that this is only the first year for one of the country’s most environmentally conscious city’s to have an all green oriented film festival. And by green I don’t mean watching three days worth of Cheech and Chong films preceded by Snoop Dogg music videos, even though Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke did feature the world’s first eco-friendly van made entirely out of marijuana. What this festival does offer are 3 days (March 3 – March 6) of “innovative, international films that explore the environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic aspects of living sustainably on this planet” (Quoted from www.sfgreenfilmfest.org).

Some film’s I’m looking forward to are Werner Herzog‘s Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, Michael Madsen‘s Into Eternity, and Fredrik Gretten‘s Bananas!*. Check out the list of all the films along with a complete schedule and ticket info along with the festival’s trailer after the jump.

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